Seltenreich
surname · Latin script
Meaning: not from 'rich in happiness', but 'rarely rich'
/sɛɫtənɹɪtʃ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Seltenreich is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country.
- CZCzechia1 in 369K(measured from records)
- PLPoland1 in 555K
- ARArgentina1 in 1.3M
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Seltenreich itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 7 (measured from records)
- 1 in 369K (inferred from the name graph)
195 people, 2010
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Czechia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled זלטנרייך in IL Israel.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
not from 'rich in happiness', but 'rarely rich'
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Seltenreich counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
195 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname); dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); MVČR — living population register 2017. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Seltenreich is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In German, s. reich. Nicht < mhd. saelden rieh "reich an Glück", sondern "sel- ten r." Vgil. Unrat (s. d.) unt her Schaffeniht .. . und einer, hei3et Selten rieh . .. her Schade und ouch her Unbereit (Min- nes. 2, 94 a, v. d. Hagen). Seit | er, mann: s. Seide 536 (seltsam): "wunderlich, grämlich". Sel(tz)sam, Selz(s)am, Selzan, Selt- zen
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Rolf Seltenreichb. 1948DEGerman politician
- Erika Seltenreich-Hodgsonb. 1995CACanadian swimmer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 13 sources across 6 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 195 | #93,921 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 190 | #101,282 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 144 | #112,967 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 80 | #74,802 |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 37 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 37 | #61,689 |
| AR Argentina | RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national) | — | 36 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (surnames) | 2026 | 32 | — |
| PL Poland | dane.gov.pl — PESEL living persons (names) | — | 32 | #67,359 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 29 | #42,303 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Seltenreich mean, and where does it come from?
- not from 'rich in happiness', but 'rarely rich' Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- How do you pronounce Seltenreich?
- A machine transcription gives /sɛɫtənɹɪtʃ/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Seltenreich have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 195 people named Seltenreich, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled seltenreich.
- Where is Seltenreich most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Seltenreich is densest in Czechia — about 1 in 369 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Seltenreich?
- In the United States, the national register counted 195 people named Seltenreich in 2010, about 1 in 1.7 million residents.
What do you want to know about Seltenreich?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/seltenreichThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Seltenreich”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.